Posts by Allan George Dyer

Re: Bullit County

"In a similar situation, if you're cornered by a thug brandishing a knife"

But the situation was not similar. Perhaps a person wearing a baseball cap and carrying a baseball bat walking towards you is more similar... no cornering, no brandishing, the potential weapon has legitimate uses.

Secondly, how much violence can be legitimately used in defence of privacy? He discharged a potentially lethal weapon (not at a person, admittedly) in a residential area.

I'd say the garden hose option would be much preferable.

Re: cart before horse

@DougS - "Transformers would prevent propagation, so you don't have to worry about neighbors the next house over"

Not everyone lives in rural America, with transformers on poles. I think having a sub-station for a whole street in quite common.

"simple PKI" - Good idea, but probably harder to find than unicorn droppings.

Re: Hollywood hacking

I really must learn that four-hands typing technique...

and

WiFi has its advantages...

Re: Wouldn't be worth it...

@martinusher - the other difference is that bacon-eaters don't exhale second-hand bacon to harm those around them.

Re: I misread the title ...

Did you get to the bottom of it?

"Alexa, we're away for 2 weeks, if you hear anything please record it and alert us"

Thank you for registering with "BurgleMe", your details have been shared with burglary service providers in your area.

Re: 2,057 described as "computer virus"

If you go by the technical definition of a computer virus (~"program that copies itself") then the respondents are probably mostly wrong, but if you loosen the definition to the layman's "computer virus" = "program that makes my computer do bad things" = "malicious software", then they are right. All those stupid "helpers", "quick starters", and entirely pointless "shortcuts" can be classified as malicious... e.g. a "quick starter" that doesn't is a trojan, a toolbar that was installed without explicit permission has committed "unauthorized access to a computer".

The survey is revealing a huge area where people feel they have been wronged, but the law has great difficulty in addressing the issue.

Re: Defence

Which is why handling this under Personal Data Protection principles would be more appropriate and more effective:

Personal data must be fairly collected for a declared purpose - intimate snaps would be assumed to be for enjoyment of the lovers involved

Personal data must be destroyed when the purpose has ended - when the relationship ends, the intimate photos must be destroyed

Appropriate security - keep them secure, no let-out for leaving unencrypted data lying around.

Photos taken for publication would be covered by an appropriate contract.

Re: "...start work on the space elevator..."

No, it's just that they've already had the cable cut to length.

Re: Hmmm

Because they bought the guns and ammo from that nice NRA guy at the county gun fair?

Re: You could mostly have gotten jail time

Getting caught by the police might be the best result for a windfall drug dealer. I imagine any existing local dealers would be a little annoyed at a new guy undercutting them, and if it happens to be the outfit that dropped the package in the first place, they could get really angry.

Right and Wrong? Re: Not completely mad

"everyone has an evil twin, mine keeps buying bacon and putting it in my fridge"

You have a warped sense of right and wrong. Obviously, he's the good one.

Re: So what would you do to improve matters?

Many would say that the current legislation already goes too far in allowing mass data collection, that more checks and balances are required to prevent from being mis-used.

Secondly, if law enforcement can't keep up with the quantity of data, collecting more isn't a benefit, it's a liability: more to categorise, analyse and protect against illegal disclosure.

Even if I accepted that everyone working in law enforcement today, and everyone in authority over them, was snow white, collecting everyone's inbox is an ongoing liability - tomorrow we might get a leader that says, "If you're not with us, you're against us. And, if ISIS can execute people for having the wrong religion, so can we - Check the inbox archive!!".

A SENSIBLE approach might be to reform current legislation, collect less data and focus on better targeting and analysis.

Face it: it's an unnecessary evil. FTFY.

(I do so love the irony when people write, "you are wailing and gnashing your teeth because someone might go trawling your Inbox" and then post AC.)

"no virus checker will know about it until" - true, but it's all about defence in depth. Anti-malware suites nowadays use multiple techniques, including emulation and heuristics to evaluate the behaviour of code. Hey, this app hooks the keyboard API AND makes connections to an external site AND is trying to install itself silently as a permanent service... are you suspicious yet? Plus, if you scan at the gateway, seeing an executable that does all that being sent in is definitely something you want to block.

Doing all that in less than 2kb is also suspicious - what developer cares about bloat nowadays?

Are you kidding about that key scrambler website? You're suggesting that the BBC uses it, but the site doesn't claim that, it quotes BBC News, but that might just be a journalist quoting the developer's own press release. That key scrambler might be useful as an additional line of defence, but preventing malware running on your system in the first place is a lot higher priority in my view.

Disclosure: I sell anti-malware products and services.

Re: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Well, normally the value of nothing is low, but if it is packaged in an interesting shape, it can be sold as a vacuum flask.

Re: You take the high ground and I'll take the low

@Mark 85 - We have the rules that apply to everyone because of what we are; what you or some politician says they are is not relevant in deciding who the rules apply to.